Sight
by Rake
Summary: (HOLES) rated R for drugs, violence, and mention of sexual scenes. wanna know who this is? simple enough, just read!
1. Confession on Paper?

Heh. And I thought writing essays for school was hard? Who was I kidding?! This is the worst idea presented to me that I can remember. Well, maybe some ideas the guys at Green Lake had were worse than this. Wait. Most of those ideas where mine. Oops.   
  
But I'm getting ahead of myself.   
  
First, let me explain why I'm writing this in the first place: I've been seeing a counselor for the last few weeks, and she just now told me to write about something. When I told her I couldn't figure anything out, she told me to write about my early years. You know, as a kid? I told no, but she eventually forced me to. I guess I can't weasel out of this like I did my school essays, huh? Ah well, everyone has a slam sometime or other, don't they? My time was then. I guess it still is now, since I would rather be outside and cruising the streets on my bike.   
  
So, yeah.   
  
I'm a new person now. The other guys probably wouldn't even recognize me now. Well, maybe if they got a good look at me. My counselor always talks to me about my urge to steal. She talks about it as if it was a drug. But then again, maybe she should. I haven't stolen, broken, swore, or done anything real bad in the last few weeks now. It's amazing. Yet I can't help but feel that I'm slightly hollow somewhere inside, you know?   
  
Okay, my counselor's name is Ms. Smeeth. Remember that.   
  
I was told to start out with something interesting. Is this interesting? It's boring to me, but I'm not you, so you figure it out. Ms. Smeeth told me to say what my life is like right now. It's boring, normal, and there's nothing bad about it. To other people. To me, everything is bad about it. Since I get in huge trouble every time I step out of line, even by accident, my life has sucked. Really. It sucks. One little cuss word and I'm grounded. Accidentally bang a dish on the sink and I get sent to my room. As if I did it on propose! Yeah, right. My parents aren't allowed to take me in yet, so, you could say I'm living with a foster family. Fun? Sure. These people think I'm crazy and sometimes they make feel like I am. Can't anyone understand that all I want to do is go home? To my real parents? I mean, I do miss my mom and dad, here! Not even Ms. Smeeth seems to get it, and she's a damn counselor!  
  
Okay, maybe that last part shouldn't have been put in there. It slipped out. She can't get mad at me, she told me to put my feelings and thoughts into this. So I am. Damn her.   
  
Counselors suck.   
  
I remember the day that weird girl came to me. It was so odd. I could swear in front of a Judge that the doorway had been empty, that's why I was running towards it, then she was there, and she stopped me. It was down a hall, so one could see me. I figured I was safe, so I just tried to sneak by. She allowed me to. That girls eyes were too freaky. It was as if she knew what I was doing. And then . . .  
  
Well, I don't want to give it away.   
  
Oh, and sorry if I sound real proper, I don't talk and write this way, but Ms. Smeeth is making me.   
  
But, yeah. This story is before now, before Green Lake.   
  
This is the other person none of the guys at Green Lake would ever call me. Ha, they're right. He's not me anymore.  
  
This is about José. 


	2. Drugs, Sex, Violence

Your views here will be MUCH different than mine, but no flames will be taken. I'll laugh at you for not being able to open yourself to new things.   
  
Thanks for the reviews so far.   
  
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Okay, so my life didn't start out too bad. I was born in the US; I'm a legal citizen, but who cares? Ms. Smeeth is such a dull sometimes. I mean, do you really wanna be reading about my baby years? I can hardly remember them, so where's the point? Exactly. There isn't one.   
  
Moving on to "newer" stuff. I lived in Florida until I turned six and moved to Alabama.   
  
In Florida my life was tough. Real tough.   
  
My mother was in the kitchen, making lunch. I ran up to her, yelling:  
  
"¡Mama, mama, mama!" ~*~"Mom, mom, mom!"~*~  
  
"¿Sí, bebé?" ~*~"Yes, baby?"~*~  
  
"¿Cuándo estamos comiendo?" ~*~"When are we eating?"~*~   
  
"Soon, José."   
  
I loved it when my mom spoke English. She didn't use it much, and I knew very little words.   
  
"Soon?"   
  
"Soon."   
  
Ever the happy go lucky kid I was then, I went outside to enjoy the hot Florida weather. If anyone knows anything about this state, the number one thing they should know: kidnapping. My family didn't know what it was, so I played in the yard, unwatched. Unsafe. A group kids several years older than me came up and started speaking in English. I've forgotten what they said, but one way or the other they got me to go "play" with them. I can't call it play, since they were so much older, so, yeah.  
  
As I was "hanging out" one of the boys pulled a small brown bag out of his pocket with a bunch of straws. Several of the others cheered.  
  
"¿Qué usted está haciendo?" ~*~"What are you doing?"~*~  
  
They stared at me blankly.   
  
"Watch!" said a girl. I understood this word, so, I watched. She took a straw and opened her hand, palm facing up. The boy with the bag pulled out a few pinches of stuff from the bag and placed it in the girl's waiting hand. She placed the straw up to a nostrol and blocked the other with a finger. With a quick snort she sucked in the power on her hand.   
  
I was confosed. I was offered the bag and a straw, but I shook my head. I didn't get the point of this.   
  
One day, I walked into the house and asked my mom, in broken English:  
  
"What heroin?"  
  
"¿Heroína?"   
  
"Sí, mama."   
  
My mother flipped. She started yelling in English strange words I couldn't understand, and can't remember anymore. I stared at her in fright. She calmed down quickly and told me what heroin was. Basically: something very bad and to stay away from it. Like that did any good.   
  
After that day I didn't talk about any sort of drug in the house again. The older kids left me alone once they saw I wasn't going to try their "fun stuff" as they called it. My mom forgot my question on heroin. I turned five. Again I was brought into a group of people older than me. They snuffed, smoked, and injected.   
  
And I learned about something new: Sex.   
  
I didn't do it, but I could watch. People went at it in the middle of a room sometimes, all everyone else did was laugh.   
  
That's the way to learn about sex, right? Seeing high people do it on someone's dining table.   
  
I didn't tell my parents anything, they didn't ask. All parents should ask questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How? Always. My parents didn't, look at what happened to me.  
  
All through my life as a five year old I watched people get high, fuck, beat each other up, handle money and drugs. Sure, there was more than that, like my home life and school, but I can't remember much on those subjects. Once, I watched in silence as the "leader" of the "gang" I had been made to join raped a girl only three years older than me. Has it scarred me? No, not really, but I can understand why someone would ask the question. When I turned six I said good-bye to those people, basically, that life. My dad had gotten a job offer, but in order to get to get it, we had to move to Alabama. Of course we packed up and went. We needed the money. Alabama was better than Florida. We lived in a better neighborhood and the streets were clean. Meaning no drugs or street gangs. But, ever good side has a bad side to it. There was a railroad track going through the middle of the city, marking the left side and right. East Side. West Side. Don't so many cities have Sides? Ms. Smeeth says yes.   
  
I grew up well in Alabama. When I was in school for the first time I got picked on for not understanding English well. I picked up words like freak, accent, wack, Hispanic, racism, hate, and disgust. I learned that making friends wasn't as easy I had thought it was, and that friends weren't what I thought they were. I thought the "gang" in Florida had been friends. Boy, was I wrong. I didn't make any friends my whole first year in Alabama, but I started getting used to the new place when I was around seven. I had learned about a pet store, and so one day I went to see it. I fell in love with all the little animals there. Cats, dogs, birds, mice, rats. Some small part of me was filled. I learned more about turtles and fish in my seventh year of life than I had learned about anything before. Not counting my sixth year. I hung around the pet store a lot and wished I was old enough to be ablt to volunteer. I saw many kids around 13 and older volunteering at the pet store. I didn't talk with any of them. I had learned that people older than me speak first. None of them ever spoke to me. Most of the kids there were white, and many snickered at me, speaking in racial terms I couldn't understand. I was, after all, only seven and still learning English.   
  
One day while I was outside playing I saw a person sitting on the curb, smoking. I walked over and pointed to it. He laughed.   
  
"What is it, little man? You want one too?"   
  
I didn't understand, but pointed to the smoke again.   
  
"It's a joint," the man said.  
  
"Joint," I repeated.  
  
"Hispanic little boy, huh?" he asked.  
  
Hispanic? I nodded.   
  
He laughed again. "Want one?"  
  
I finally understood. "Sí," I said.   
  
"English please," the man said nicely.   
  
"Yes," I said.   
  
"Good boy. Sit here by Tom."   
  
I sat down and the man pulled out some smoke things from his pocket. "Going to roll you one, all right?"  
  
I watched him. Fasinated. Roll? Okay. I got that. He handed the joint to me and I placed it in my mouth, copying Tom. He smiled.   
  
"Now you have to light it," he said.   
  
"Light it," I repeated and he did.  
  
He breathed in. I breathed in. He smoothly exhaled, but I coughed.  
  
Tom laughed again. He had a good laugh. I smiled.   
  
"You'll get used to it," he told me.   
  
From then on I hung out with Tom almost as much as I did at the pet store. He taught me how to roll my own joints, he said my hands were thieves' hands.   
  
"Thief?" I said.  
  
"Steals," Tom told me. He had thought me the word from the phrase "to take, no ask, no allowed."   
  
With Tom, I learned quickly. And Tom learned a little from me too. I did math with him, drawing in the dirt of the playground.   
  
"Or else they you can play piano real well," Tom said. "Come on, I'll show you."  
  
Tom lead me to the local library and he looked up pianos and players. Soon he had taught me what a piano was, told me about a few keys, and explained why I was a pick-pocket.  
  
He showed me how to steal. He showed me how to take the drug from the dealer as Tom talked to him. The dealers weren't in my side of town, they were on the otherside of the tracks.   
  
In the East Side I met a new type of human. I met the African-American, and was scared. I hid behind Tom, clinging to him with my small thief's hands. But I was a little kid. It only took me a week or so before these new people were normal. Perfectly fine. I began splitting up my after-school time between Tom and the pet store. Tom wasn't allowed in the store.  
  
The clerk himself taught me a few new words: bum, hobo, street picker, druggie.   
  
Tom explained all the words to me.   
  
When I turned 13 Tom brought me a new substance for my joint. It's what people legally smoke, tobacco. I didn't like it, so I gave it back to Tom as a present. We laughed about it. I had almost gotten the whole English language, but words cam and went nearly everyday. One day hot was the weather or your food, and then it was "he's so hot!" Then it would switch back again. How wouldn't get confused? My mom and dad made sure I remember my Spanish. All we talked in at home was Spanish. I even taught Tom a few words.   
  
I always told Tom how I wanted a puppy. He told me that he would get me one. Once he got the money. I smiled when he said that. When I asked my parents, they only disagreed. Tom was almost like an older brother to me. When I had my 14th birthday, Tom disappeared. I searched for him after school, totally skipping over the pet store. None of the people that knew him in the East Side knew where he had gone.   
  
My friend Tom, who I had now nearly grown up with, had left my life. 


	3. Yellow Spray Paint Gets Me High

On my 15th birthday I was told I was getting a puppy. I flipped with joy. Finally, the thing I had wanted the most was coming to me! I couldn't wait. It came from a litter of puppies my grandmother's dog had had.   
  
Okay, now you might be asking, where did she come from? My grandmother had been living in Mexico, but moved into Alabama, following her child, my dad, finally. I met her when I was 12. She was nice old lady who didn't speak a word of English. Good thing I had never forgotten my Spanish.  
  
But, the puppy didn't do much. It sat there and stared gloomly at whatever its face was pointed at. I tried my best to get the puppy to play. For two days my heart cracked, and on the third, it broke. Something in me gave up. The loss of Tom, my very best friend, and now this? The dog I had been promised, gone? My parents were lying! The dog wasn't dead, just hiding somewhere. I wouldn't hear what they were saying to me, my ears were blocked. I screamed at them English words I later wondered if they knew.   
  
That day I jumped out in the street and crossed the tracks into the East Side and hid in one of Tom's favorite hiding places. I didn't want anyone here to see me cry. No matter what side of the track I was on, if anyone saw me cry, I'd be done and over with.  
  
I suddenly kicked out of the store. I tried to enter one day after school, but the man yelled at me and warned that if I ever came he would call the police. He was tired of me hanging around and not buying. I hard tried for a volunteer job, but the man wouldn't let me volunteer. I stamped Racist on his mermory and never entered the store again after he yelled at me.   
  
I began thinking more and more what I had left behind in Florida. Maybe I would be the leader of the gang now. Maybe I would be the one raping young girls. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. What if I had become a leader? What if I had started taking their drugs? What if I had started fucking girls at parties on people's dining tables? What if. What if. What if. The questions just rang through my head, twisting themselves together.   
  
Going to the East Side I asked about such gangs and parties. Almost a week later I was picked up by a gang. They were all guys, and looked tough as nails. Acted that way too. Before they fully allowed me to join, each had gotten the chance of beating me up. There, I was in. I was part of a gang again. This time when I was offered joints I took them, but then again, hadn't Tom been smoking marijuana too? When I was 16 someone brought in crack. We all had it. The other guys took so much, they forgot they had even taken it. I remembered everything. I, myself, hadn't done anything, but one of the guys had called his girlfriend, and I guess she called some of her friends, because there was suddenly a group of girls there with us. Several of them came on to me, but I pushed them away, still content to watch the other guys play.   
  
Then I tried coke. I tried it in my room, so I have no worries of having done anything bad. I had made sure I couldn't by cuffing myself to my own bed and hiding the key from myself. It took me an hour when I was normal to find it again. That way, I knew I hadn't been at a party, maybe having sex with some strange girl.   
  
When I was 12 Tom had showed me something really strange. It was in books. Guys with guys and girls with girls. He explained everything and when I understood took me to see one of his homosexual friends. At first I was scared at the man would try something with me, but Tom was there. I didn't go around that man until I felt strong enough to fight him off if he did try something. I'm glad he never did.   
  
At 16 I had been reliving my life as a six year old, and it was giving me a buzz. I loved it. I still hadn't had sex, and I didn't want to. Watching other people seemed to calm my own hormones. I watched as guys and girls from the West Side, repsected kids, came and screwed with strangers.One day I heard the name of all the parties I been going to: "urgies." Or, that's what I thought it was.   
  
Around the middle of my 16th year I was introduced to spray painting and graffiti. Now here was something I went crazy over.   
  
And it wasn't just the artwork or the thrill of doing something I shouldn't.  
  
It was the paint fumes.   
  
Everytime I snuffed them before I painted. It gave me an edge the others didn't have on their graffiti. A lot of my spray paintings had yellow. A lot of yellow. 


	4. What Had I Done?

I started doing heroin around the same time as graffiti.   
  
The guys in the gang did it too. We were a heroin addict gang. We shared needles. No thought about the chances of getting some disease. We didn't care. We only wanted to get high.   
  
The guys started having larger parties with more people. As much from the West Side as the East. People from out of town even came at times. How they heard about it, I've never figured out. The girls were all skinny and they hardly took drugs. Maybe they wanted to remember what they had been doing that night.   
  
I stole and I cheated and I lied and I did everything to save my own hide. That was the rule. Or else be eaten.   
  
One day, one of the guys scared me.  
  
I couldn't breathe for at least a minute. And of course they only laughed at me. If I had been in their shoes, I would have been laughing at me too. That's just the way it went.   
  
Afterwards I was careful about being scared.   
  
But I kept the drugs and violence. I didn't want the sex and fright.  
  
I took a needle home. I wasn't 17 yet, that was about seven months way. I took heroin home. My parents still didn't know anything about my after-school activites. At least, I don't think they did. But if they did, they never said anything about it to me.  
  
Sitting on my bed I readied my needle. And then I readied my vein.   
  
Then, I injected. And I did it again. And again. Three times I pierced myself with the needle. Three little spots of blood on my arm. Three full shots of heroin. What had I done? 


	5. Emily Hoffman

I found a poem once, the only one that I can remember. It goes like this:   
  
a dark little wanderer  
  
wondering about life  
  
traveling in silence  
  
looking for home again  
  
I can't help but think it was written for me. Have you ever gotten that feeling? Ms. Smeeth says that most people have. That's exactly how I read it. I'm surprised I can even remember it. I can't remember where it was or anything. It was written by Emily Hoffman, but I've never found anything on her, and I haven't seen the poem since. Ms. Smeeth just says that it must have been a one time publish and then forgotten about.   
  
I wish I could meet her. I've wished that for a long time. Her poem just draws me into it, you know?   
  
Man, this is beginning to sound sappy. Ms. Smeeth says I need to continue though.   
  
I'm wondering about that first line, does it mean dark as in evil, or dark as in skin tone? I have dark skin, but I'm not evil. Man, that poem just sounds too much like me.   
  
You figure it out. 


End file.
